


It Means the Whole Autumn

by APgeeksout



Category: Life (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-17
Updated: 2013-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-04 22:24:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1086346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life goes on.  Crews and Reese try to go with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Means the Whole Autumn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jamjar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamjar/gifts).



> Happy Holidays and Happy Yuletide, jamjar! :)

He closed his eyes against the high, bright sun and tipped his face up to let the light and the heat bake his skin. He drew a deep breath, and it came easily, in spite of the dry and dusty air. Dustier still as the approaching car disturbed the dirt track and threw a cloud of grit into the air. He let it swirl around him, settle on his skin, cling to his suit.

His hands - one still tingled with the echo of his strike at Nevikov - were tight fists at his sides.  He mindfully uncurled his fingers and flexed them wide, opening his hands to the sun and the air and the moment. He listened to the crunch of tires on the dry earth, and as the noise drew close, dropped his chin and opened his eyes to look at the car and at his partner inside it.

“Don't get out,” he called, speaking too late, since she was out of her seat and closing the distance between them even before Bodner had brought the car to a stop. “I'm getting in,” he continued.  "We won't want to be here in just a little while.  Well, I'm happy we're _here_ ," he gestured at the space between them, "but it will be better if we're not discovered... here." He opened his arms to take in the whole of the grove around them. 

Charlie will never be able to recall whether he reached for her first, or if she stepped into him, or if, one plus one equaling one, they did it in unison, but however it happened, they ended up wrapped together in a hug, one of Reese's hands cupped around the back of his neck, his cheek against her hair.

He liked to tell himself that every place where prison had broken him was another place he'd healed doubly strong; there were even times he believed it.  Though she was slighter than himself, he'd never thought of Reese as delicate; even at her most brittle, she's never seemed breakable.  Still, the instantaneousness of Nevikov's end had reminded him how fragile people could be. He was grateful – to Reese or the universe or his network or what exactly, he couldn't have said – for the opportunity to stand still and quiet.  To know that she was real, and that he could be too.   

“The answer was 'no'.” She tilted her forehead against his shoulder, tickling him with her hair and muffling her voice against his jacket. “That first day – the Rawls kid – you asked if anybody ever loved me enough to take a bullet for me and then tear a piece off of the shooter. The answer then was 'no'.”

 

"What do you even have to clean out of your desk?" Reese asked, emptying the contents of her center drawer into the banker's box now half-full of her personal effects, and resolutely ignoring the curious looks turning to them from the bullpen's other occupants.  After all her years of practice as _Jack Reese's daughter_ and  _the UC who ended up all coked out_ and _partner's the one who went down for murder_ , Dani was pretty adept at tuning out the static.

Crews sat in the chair at his immaculate desk, and leaned down to reach into one of the lower drawers.  He came back up with a beatific smile and a mesh bag of citrus fruit.  "I have clementines.  And apparently a lot of free time has just opened up on my calendar in which to peel and section them.  Although, clementines peel pretty easily, so that's definitely not going to be a long-term solution."  He was doing that thing again - talking to himself through her - but she was used to it now.  God help her, it felt almost normal.  "What will you do during your 'Paid Leave Pending Investigation', Reese?"  

"Well, I can tell you, it won't be peeling clementines."  It would probably be more meetings with the department shrink.  Deciding whether or how much to tell her mother about Nevikov's speech about her father.  Figuring out if there was anything salvageable between herself and Tidwell.  

"Except for maybe this one?" Crews said, placing a piece of fruit on the uncharacteristically clear surface of her desk. 

"Sure." 

"Detective Crews!" A young black woman in a crisp suit, detective's shield clipped to her belt, was weaving between work stations and bodies on her way across the bullpen.  "How are you?" she asked with a warm smile.  

"Making exciting plans for my administrative leave."

"Your Captain is doing as much as he can to wrap up the investigation," she offered, smile going rueful.  Then, lowering her voice, "I think it's coming from somewhere over his head now."

She turned to Reese and held out a hand to shake, "I don't think we've been formally introduced, Detective.  Jane Seever."  

"Dani Reese."  She had a good handshake: firm, but not the pointless strength contest so many of her father's friends and lackeys had made of it over the years.  

"Seever rode with me while you were - " he paused where 'missing' would go, "out on loan."

"An adequate substitute, but not a replacement,"  Seever said.  "You were missed."

"One word about what zen has to say about whether or not people are replaceable," she warned Crews. "Just one."

He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.  "As you wish.  I will say that Seever is no one's substitute.  She's going to be mayor one day."

"Yeah?"

"That's the plan." 

Dani knew all about plans, and how they worked out.  Or mostly didn't.  But Seever was a different person, maybe she had a different life.  "Well, I'm glad you didn't throw yourself off track by shooting my partner.  I'm sure it must have been tempting."

"She missed me, too."  Crews said, holding out a handful of neatly separated citrus sections.  "Clementine?"

 

The house has an echo.  Charlie hadn't noticed it before - or maybe hadn't allowed himself to notice - but there was a distinct, hollow echo that followed his footfalls, the sound of his knife on the cutting board, the ticking of the clock Rachel had hung on the wall in her room.  Not quite voices bouncing off concrete, fists on steel doors, but not quite different either. 

The neighbors would complain if he brought the horse back.  Which migh be worth it, if he thought the animal would be good company, or that he could care for it better than the grove-foreman's grandchildren.

Still, this could be fixed.  His house was empty, but he was full of ideas.  At least one of them had to be good.  Right?

 

On the eighth day of the investigation, a uniform found Jack Reese's wedding band and the gold watch commemorating his 25 years of service time in one of Nevikov's vaults.  In a few days more, officers assigned to the task force located enough identifiable human remains to make an official determination. The memorial was crowded and elaborate.   A sea of dress uniforms, and speeches by innumerable dignitaries, befitting a decorated officer of such long standing as Jack Reese.  

When it was all over, Reese steered her mother to a black town car, murmuring in her ear before releasing her into the care of a pair of slim, olive-skinned women, their silver hair covered by scarves.  Aunts?  They took the widow into their arms and spirited her away, leaving Reese to receive the wave of condolences. 

Charlie moved through the throng toward her, Rachel's fingers snagging his sleeve to avoid being separated.  She had consented to come back to the house - to help him fill it with furniture "like someplace a real person would actually live" and to stay there with him until she knew where else she wanted to go, what else she needed to do - and though there was still an awkwardness to their days, she had appeared at the door that afternoon, dress black and expression somber.

Reese gripped his arm firmly when he came into range.  "Stay here."

"Need backup?" 

She nodded grimly.  "Good thing I've got a partner."   

She turned to Rachel, studying her as she'd done in his foyer.  "Crews said you were coming home.  Thank you for coming."  

"Jack was always kind to me,"  Rachel said.  "I wanted to make sure somebody said that today.  That he could be kind.

Reese's face softened, even as her grip tightened on his arm. "I'm glad."

Another burst of captains and lieutenants and various up-and-comers approached to pay - and be seen paying - their respects.  Charlie stuck close and absorbed as much of the awkward small-talk as possible.  Agent Bodner appeared at the fringes of the scene, waited for Reese's nod of acknowledgment, and melted away.   

Seever was among the last cluster of well-wishers, and drew Reese into a quick, one-armed hug.  "Take care of yourself."

"Working on it."

"All you can do," she said.  "I'll see you in the morning?"

Reese nodded, and shook hands with the Vice detective waiting nearby.  Seever greeted Charlie and introduced herself to Rachel, drawing her off to chat and, Rachel would tell him later - bright for a moment with an enthusiasm that he recognized as belonging to the child he had known and mourned  - to recruit her as a mentor for the community center Seever had worked with since her college years. 

"What's happening tomorrow morning?" he asked.  They were near enough to alone now, the crowd trickling back to their cars, leaving a few knots of stragglers, and a handful of workers waiting for even them to clear out. 

"We're going for a run," Reese said, her expression daring him to comment. 

"You're running buddies?" 

"Well, we couldn't exactly be drinking buddies, could we?"  She let her hair down from its neat bun and refastened it in a lower, looser knot.  "Speaking of which: Crews, distract me from the fact that I'm not going to go home and have the five or eight drinks I really, really want." 

"Agreed.  You'll come back to my place."  He offered her his arm, and she looped her own through it, even as she looked up at him as though she might laugh at the courtly gesture.  

"You'll make me a fruit cocktail?"

"Absolutely.  Five or eight of them if you want.  And you can eat it at the new kitchen table.  Or on the couch.  Reese, I have a couch now.  And bookshelves.  And an ottoman with storage space inside, though I really don't have enough clutter to need hidden storage space.  I don't want the clutter, but it seems like a shame to deprive the storage ottoman of its useful purpose."

"You don't want it to feel empty inside?" she said, and though her face was tilted away from him, he heard the smile in her tone.   

**Author's Note:**

> Title snagged from zen proverb attributed to Shunryu Suzuki: One falling leaf is not just one leaf; it means the whole autumn.


End file.
